Glorious

"What can be more a man’s own than this new name which even in eternity remains a secret between God and him?  And what shall we take this secrecy to mean? Surely, that each of the redeemed shall forever know and praise some one aspect of the divine beauty better than any other creature can. Why else were individuals created, but that God, loving all infinitely, should love each differently?"     -C.S. Lewis

During a recent vacation to Colorado, I fulfilled a lifelong dream… crossed one of those things off my shrinking bucket list.  On the day that Young Life’s Trailwest Ranch was waiting to receive hundreds of visitors from dozens of families, they invited me to speak to their army of volunteers and staff. 

I spent some time in a coffee shop in Buena Vista trying to capture my thoughts and ideas.  Typically, my heart lands on reminding people, like C.S. does above, that they have something profound and amazing about them that uniquely reflects the Creator in a way that no one else can.

Understanding that has changed the way I view every other person:

• It is the perspective I have fought to keep with the people I have led.
• It is the treasure I mine for in even chance encounter with strangers.
• It is the deepest and truest understanding I have about each of my children.

Living into this idea even changed the way I tuck each of them in to bed.

We talk about the things they shouldn’t have done.

Talk about the unique way they reflect the glory of the divine.

Remind them that what they’ve done isn’t who they are.

There is so much I now understand in raising our second three of six, that I wished I had known with the first batch.  They weren’t tucked in this way.  They were mostly told that they were loved, but that they did bad and needed to do better.  

I wish I could have focused more on the joy Emily found in playing
in the mud than the mess that it made and the nightgown it ruined.

But I’m making up for lost time.

One of the most redemptive parts of getting to speak to Trailwest on this occasion was that five of my children, a son-in-law, and my precious wife were sitting in the crowd.  When I introduced them before the talk I gave, I told everyone what is truest about all of them.  I told everyone how I knew that each of them uniquely carried the glory of their Creator.  I told them how each of them changed my life by how I encounter the divine in them.

As I scratch out these thoughts and ideas in a coffee shop, I am surrounded by a dozen or so folks, I wonder which unique and glorious aspect of the Divine they each possess.  I wonder if they know what it is.

I wonder if someone regularly reminds them.

I wonder if they see it as the truest thing about them when they look in a mirror.

• How do you uniquely bear the image of the Divine?
• Do you know the same about those you love and lead?
• How much would your perception of them change if you knew?
• How much would their lives change if you told them?

Fundamental

"He's not throwing behind-the-back passes, he's not doing tomahawk jams, he's not doing anything that's very flashy. He's just a very unassuming guy who goes about his job, and the next thing you know he's got 23 points and 20 rebounds."          -Byron Scott

Most eulogies focus on the individual.  But for the truly great ones, they focus on something far more profound and enduring.  When really significant people move on, all the acknowledgement of their greatest tends to focus on the impact they had on others.

When it is all about you, it is all about you.  

Whether you are a father/mother, a pro athlete, or a businessman, your life will ultimately be measured by the impact you had on others.

When one of my spiritual fathers, Dallas Willard, died, I was astounded by how many people seemed to know him.  It felt like hundreds of eulogies were written online about the impact this man had on each of them.  Only the most selfless and simple a life, could have that deep an impact on so many.  Despite his profound writing, teaching, and speaking, Dallas lived a powerfully simple life full of margin and room… to invest in and change the lives of many.  He lived a Kingdom life where he reserved all his attention for the most precious of God’s creation… you and I.

Living in San Antonio, we have had a front row seat on a selfless life expression of another sort.  In an industry where arrogance, flash, and self-aggrandizement seems to be the barometer for success, Tim Duncan chose a different path.  His recent retirement prompted dozens of tributes including videos.

While they all mention his personal accomplishments:

• 2 Time NBA Most Valuable Player
• 15 Years all NBA Team
• 15 Years all NBA Defensive Team
• 13 Years NBA All-Star
• 14th in all time scoring
• 6th in all time rebounding
• 5th in all time blocks

Most of the tributes focus on his selfless play, his unassuming manner, and how much better he made everyone around him.  They obviously point to the five NBA championships during his career, but the more astounding statistics are around the sustained excellence of the team through his career.

• The year before he was drafted, they won 24% of their games
• During his 19 seasons, they won 72% of their games
• They made the playoffs all 19 years
• They won over 60% of their games in every season
• They had a winning road record in all 19 seasons

Those are the numbers that make the experts really shake their heads.

He took less money, fended off lucrative offers from other teams, played a diminishing role, and modeled what being a team player, and focused on the success of everyone.  His greatest honors are a result of how he honored all others above himself.

In Lencioni’s Five Dysfunctions of a Team, the ultimate destination is found in shared results.  We coach our clients toward the rarely obtained organizational health because it is the greatest determinant of long term success.  It means they must establishe trust, engage in healthy conflict, find new levels of commitment, and institute accountability structures… so that the team can focus on, celebrate, and enjoy sustained success through shared results.

It is as rare in pro sports as it is in corporate America, but I can point to Tim Duncan’s career and a growing list of companies I know that are finding the same.

It’s all about the fundamentals.

• Are you a selfless leader?
• Is your entire focus on making other’s better?
• Does your life look more like serving others or being served?
• Are you ready to start the journey toward to organizational health that will ultimately be measured in your team’s success?

Selfish

“Are you a born writer? Were you put on earth to be a painter, a scientist, an apostle of peace? In the end the question can only be answered by action….
Don't cheat us of your contribution. Give us what you've got.”

Steven Pressfield

It is around 5 AM on a Saturday morning.  When I first checked the clock it had a 4 handle.  Experience tells me that trying to find my way back into some state of slumber is futile.  My head is spinning. 

There was a season when my mind didn’t rest as a result of the usual things:

• Will my marriage make it?
• How badly have I screwed up the raising of my kids?
• Will I ever really be able to retire?  Am I really supposed to?
• Should I be doing something else with my life?

Those aren’t the things that tend to waken me anymore.  It is more about thoughts, ideas, concepts, hopes, and my deepest desires.  I check my Starbucks app to makes sure I can land somewhere that will actually receive me at this time of day and head out into the darkness.

There are explanations for all of this:

• I discovered life through thousands of books as a kid.
• I found dozens of vicarious family experiences from the folks on the TV that raised me.  (My first trip to Hawaii was as the 7th Brady kid.)
• My StrengthsFinder tells me that I possess “Ideation” (Fascinated by ideas and more able than most to connect disparate thoughts, ideas, and concepts to make them more easily understandable).
• My DISC says that I am a natural “I: Influential” - (Creative problem solver, great encourager and motivator of others.  Someone who doesn’t mind being the center of attention).
• But our enemy also whispers that I have too much to say and that I just need to shut up and keep my opinions to myself.

Several of my closest friends and I were enjoying some nachos and drinks during our weekly gathering when one of them asked me about what these posts meant to me.  I told them it was something that I couldn’t not do, that it gave me great joy, often felt effortless, sometimes produced really nice feedback, but often felt selfish or indulgent.

It is as if an amateur guitar player, who simply loves to play, set up stools twice a week in a public place and actually had people gather.  And they came and spent their precious time, actually seeming to enjoy themselves.  And they further stated that they felt more clear, focused, or inspired by the experience.

Despite all of that, it is the artist that would be most blessed… even honored and humbled by the process.

This morning my eyes are blurry, but not with lack of sleep.  I am overwhelmed with a sense of humility, honor, and privilege.  Thanks for letting me share my thoughts with you.  It means more to me than you can know and I can’t imagine functioning without it.

• What is the thing that brings you the greatest joy?  The thing that you most feel God’s pleasure when you do it?
• What is the thing that other people note about you that is special or different?
• What can you uniquely offer that might enhance the quality of other’s lives?  (Our LifePlan process is where I powerfully started understanding that.)
• If you enjoy reading this blog, would you mind sharing it with a few folks?  (That would mean a great deal to me.)

Bridges

Burn One's Bridges

1. Literally to cutoff the way back to where you came from, making it impossible to retreat. 
2. Figuratively to act unpleasantly in a situation that you are leaving, ensuring that you'll never be welcome to return. 
3. Figuratively to make decisions that cannot be changed in the future.

I’ve always heard that expression used in a negative way.  As in, don’t ever do what it says in definition #2 above.  It is usually associated with “leaving well” when you left one job situation for another or in making big decisions, but leaving your options open.  I think, for the most part, that is prudent sage advice.  

Lately, however, in a world that is so uncertain, where fear and safety seem to guide so much of our decision making and bold declarative movements forward seem to be in such short supply, I think it requires that we do some burning.  In a culture where failure (the necessary playground for true growth and change) is not considered an option and a truly transformed life and situation is a rare commodity, cutting off our retreat is often a good idea.

A young friend of mine was recently vacationing in one of his favorite places in the world.  Like most of us, an extended vacation allows the appropriate time to truly unplug, take inventory of your life, and find some “bigger picture” type of clarity.  Unlike most of us, however, he was at a significant juncture in his life, where making a bold move with his family was truly the right option for them.  

He and his wife were in complete agreement that moving their young family to this new territory was the right decision.  But before he left to return home, his realtor and family friend gave him some truly profound advice.

Make the decision before you go.

Effectively, burn the bridges behind you.  Buy a house in the new place.  Apply for a job.  Let your current employer know.  Put your current house on the market.

Cutoff the way back to the place you came from so that it is impossible to retreat.  

The necessary ingredient in making bold declarative moves, it turns out, is not certainty, but faith.  And faith is the necessary ingredient of courage.

• Knowing that nothing escapes His hand.
• Knowing that He has overcome this world.
• Knowing that nothing can separate me from the love of God.
• Knowing that He makes beauty from ashes.
• That all things work together for good.

Making bold moves (not the relatively minor ones that most of us make that result in little change) is how we find a deeper life in God.  We learn to know Him more in the unknown of our decisions and the resulting consequences.  That is kind of the point right?  If we remove the risk and add every contingency to make sure there is no opportunity for failure, where is the need for any kind of faith?

Likely, the important byproduct of burning our bridges in this way is that we unknowingly invite others to do the same.  We woo them into a life of courage, change, and most importantly, a deeper faith in God.  My life and family look really different from a few years ago.  It has required that we:

• Burn bridges behind us in some situations.
• Sever all ties in others.
• Develop a faith and resulting courage that we did not know previously.

I think that kind of movement is not only the stuff of changing your own life, but others.  Hopefully, the future generations of my family included.

• What is the source of the unsettled and discontent heart inside of you?
• What is the bold, declarative, and risky move you must make?
• How will you and others be tested, changed, and inspired in the process?
• Are you ready to burn some bridges?

Smile

smile

/smīl/

verb

1. form one's features into a pleased, kind, or amused expression, typically with the corners of the mouth turned up and the front teeth exposed.

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I stopped at a convenience store just down the street from the golf course where I would be speaking at a Chamber of Commerce luncheon.  I was a little behind schedule, but needed to stop for some aspirin due to a piercing headache.  I never expected I would find a line six people deep at this time of day.

I’ve been working on being more patient with some success, but given the circumstances there was a good chance I wasn’t going to pass this test.  There was a young girl checking people out and another employee standing beside her watching and giving her instructions.

Why don’t they open another register?

Why doesn’t he grab the reins for a minute until they get caught up?

Before I had a chance to get too frustrated, he turned to the line and addressed everyone:

“Hey, can you believe this is her first day?  She is doing an incredible

job handling all the new things she is learning, don’t you think?”

He was grinning from ear-to-ear and his sincere delight in her almost required that you join him in celebrating her.  Almost on cue, everyone in line, including me, told her that the wait was no problem and that she was doing a great job.

Not only had he diffused the situation, but also honored her in the process and completely changed my mood.

How did he do that?

There are any number of other things he could have done that would have expedited the line and gotten us all out of there a few seconds quicker, but he chose a different way.  He not only encouraged her, but invited all of us to do the same.  As a result of that smile and those thoughtful words, he triggered all manner of good things in each of us.  

Showing others kindness:

1. Causes increased levels of dopamine in the brain that makes us feel better.
2. Produces the hormone oxytocin which causes the release of nitric oxide in your blood vessels which reduces blood pressure.
3. Reduces levels of free radicals and inflammation in the cardiovascular system and thus slows aging at its source.

And if that weren’t enough, he also invited us to join him in fulfilling the role that God placed each of us here for; making Him better known by the way we care for others.

It is unlikely he was thinking of any of that.  As a great leader he simply cared about how all of this would make her feel… the lasting impact of this incident.  The fear and concern on her face replaced by a big smile told him that he had hit his mark.

Consider

• How would you have responded to that situation as a leader?
• Is there someone you need to honor and encourage where you are currently doing otherwise?
• How can you encourage this in your organization’s culture?

Pioneers

“O you youths, Western youths,

So impatient, full of action, full of manly pride and friendship,

Plain I see you Western youths, see you tramping with the foremost,

Pioneers! O pioneers!

Have the elder races halted?

Do they droop and end their lesson, wearied over there beyond the seas?

We take up the task eternal, and the burden and the lesson,

Pioneers! O pioneers!”

Walt Whitman

I was meeting with my son and his business partner for a strategic offsite.  (They run an extraordinary timber frame business called Oakwrites.  Check out this 360 degree picture of some of their work.)  I wanted to initiate our time together by reading Whitman’s “Pioneer O Pioneer” and talking about the pioneer spirit my son was birthed from.

I told him several key things about his pioneer heritage:

• His mom’s family was one of 23 families from he Canary Islands sent by the King of Spain to colonize San Antonio in the late 1600’s.]
• His great great grandparents on my side emigrated from Germany and helped settle Nordheim, TX in the 1800’s.
• His grandparents moved from there to Floresville, TX, purchased land and started a family grocery that existed for more than 50 years.
• His grandfather left a large company and secure position to start his own company.
• His father left a successful 25 year career in investment banking to coach businesses of all sizes.
• He left college and is part of a start-up business that has found their Blue Ocean strategy of reclaiming oak trees that have suffered oak wilt and turning them into beautiful things before they are harvested and burned.

Ironically, he was largely unaware of most of that history, but was pretty floored by what he heard.  For he had someone pray about a pioneer spirit in him while he was in Spain at an international mission’s academy and had largely forgotten it until this moment.

The reality is that none of us arrive at this place without intention or a journey.  When you excavate your own life as well as the prior generations, they carry powerful clues.  In our SummitTrek LifePlan process we help everyone see how God has been intending and speaking through your story, experiences, hopes and dreams.  The evidence is all there waiting to be unearthed and acknowledged.

A more clear, fulfilling, and powerful life awaits on the other side.  If you desire clarity and an understanding of the best way forward for your organization or your family, it must begin with first finding the same for your own life.

• Do you know who you are?
• Do you know why you are here?
• Do you know what God intended when He intended you?
• Are you ready to find out?  (Sign up for our next LifePlan retreat)

Grieve

“There is a hole in the world now in the place where he was.”

- Nicholas Wolterstorff

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My sister got very angry with me.  Through tears and frustration, she yelled:

“Don’t you feel anything for him?”

Well, of course I did.  My father had been in some stage of dying, almost cheating death, for ten years. What distance had grown through the latter teen years, college, and the early phase of my marriage, had been bridged.  We were the closest of friends.  I delighted in the quirky and particular nature of God’s unique creation inside of him.

While his own life challenges and unawakened heart from the difficulties he had found in his 70 or so years made him hard to know, I had finally found him.  Despite what his involvement and ability to offer in my life had taught me, I knew now that he delighted in me.  I was the beloved son whose every call, every anecdote about the adventuring of the parenting of my children, seemed to be a growing strand of his pearls of great price.

They asked me to speak at his funeral and I couldn’t bring myself to play the part. There was a brokenness, a fear and longing that was sweeping through the family. A banquet of anger, bewilderment, and unreconciled relationships. Goodness, hope, and the very heart of God seemed to be on trial. 

I felt none of that.  I felt almost completely the opposite.

I had parsed the grief over the prior 10 years, all past frustrations had been reconciled, and his passing into “the end of his beginning” as my beloved Dallas Willard says, was the very proof of the nature and heart of God. He would be suffering and broken no longer and he would fully know the Father that he was created to fully know.

How could I speak about loss when the gap between this life and the next, 
in the span of eternity, was merely a blinking of the eyes?

How could I reflect the grief they were feeling when I felt nothing but the joy
and release that only restoration and ultimate healing can bring?  

They couldn’t possibly understand the joy I was feeling and I couldn’t reconcile myself to the grief they were experiencing.  We were watching the same movie and interpreting completely different story lines.

So I didn’t speak at my father’s funeral.

I recently listened to the podcast of a man grieving the death of his beloved friend.  This man is a spiritual giant, a father of sorts to me.  His grief deeply affected me, almost caught me off guard.  Despite his deep understanding of eternity and beautifully powerful, reconciled, and abiding friendship with the man, he was almost paralyzed by his heartache.

In some strange way, I am grieving my father’s loss this morning through different eyes as a result... more the eyes of my heart.  And I am feeling the precious, consoling, holy pain of loss.  I am aware, for the first time, that I didn’t speak at my father’s funeral due to something far deeper than my love, conviction, and great hope of eternity.  I didn’t speak because I didn’t yet know how to grieve.

Loss has been such a common theme (part of the clear meta-narrative of my story) that the adaptive coping of my heart had taught me not to feel.  Today, I am feeling it again, for what feels like the first time.  Uncharted territory of my heart is being mapped.  It is beautiful, glorious, and heartbreaking all at the same time.

Consider

• What do you need to grieve that you haven’t yet grieved?
• Can you feel the desensitization of your heart as you have adaptively learned to protect yourself from pain and disappointment?
• Listen to this podcast of someone deeply grieving honestly and well.  It might just awaken some things you didn’t know were asleep.

Favorite

“Just as you, Father, are in me and I in you,

So they might be one heart and mind with us.

Then the world might believe that you, in fact, sent me.

The same glory you gave me, I gave them,

So they’ll be as unified and together as we are—

I in them and you in me.

Then they’ll be mature in this oneness,

And give the godless world evidence

That you’ve sent me and loved them

In the same way you’ve loved me.” 

Jesus of Nazareth

I am not a collector, a saver, or a hoarder.  I like a simple few things and don’t have need for very much else.  I have 10 of the same kind of shirt that I wear all the time to almost any occasion (much to the consternation of my wife and one of my partners).  I don’t have a laundry list of things that I am hoping to get.  In fact, every year my wife asks me what I want for Father’s Day (I just celebrated my 25th one of those).  I have answered that question a couple of dozen times exactly the same way:

I want to hear from my children.

Their heart in their words.  Initially, those handwritten cards contained carefully drawn pictures with very simple thoughts connected by a collection of misspelled words.  Increasingly, I hear mature thoughtfulness, recognition, and the encouraging hope that my great love for them might just have won out over all the rest I showed them to the contrary.  They seem to really believe they are loved and all the rest seems to melt into that overriding truth.  

That secret fear I carry is requited, at least for the moment…

Maybe I didn’t screw things up as bad as I feared.

My father used to infuriate me.  Every birthday, I would get a Hallmark card from him with the simple epitaph, “Love, Dad.”  While he was a man of very few words, I secretly hoped that he had reserved a few special ones just for me.  I thought that one day, I might open a card without the strained verse written by a stranger, but the particular and precious words from a father to a son.

One time, he asked me to go to the Hallmark store with him because he needed an anniversary card for my stepmom.  I was shocked to watch that rascal read every card in the rack!  Carefully filtering through stilted verse to find the one that said just what he longed to say, but his own words failed to convey.  And then a simple revelation hit me.

He deeply felt every word in every card he had given me.

Tired verse became personal and I secretly wished that all the birthday cards, likely discarded in disappointment, could be unearthed so that I could savor every word that he so precisely offered.

In a similar way, I am reading scripture with new eyes.  If I read scripture like a Hallmark card, a generic message intended for a generic audience, it routinely fails to hit its’ mark.  But when I read it as a love letter from my Father, each word specifically chosen for me, His beloved, the words leap off the page and I am undone.

An awesome young podcaster I love has made communicating this simple idea his life mission…

We are His favorite.

He makes a very compelling case.  One simple podcast on the topic, only 15 minutes long, will unnerve, disrupt, and possibly break you with this mostly hidden truth:

YOU ARE HIS FAVORITE

I am not ignoring original sin or the fact that we live in a fallen world.  I am simply believing the entire gospel that says that despite the fact that I have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God, that He made a way for me.  So that, in Jesus, I can know the love of the Father exactly the way He did.  I am choosing to allow the truth to set me free.  And I am praying that my children will know and believe it well before the 40 years it took me to know and understand.

I pray that with every drink from his water bottle (pictured above), my son will be reminded of what his father is trying so hard to make sure we both understand:

He is His favorite and so am I.

What was your initial reaction to this idea?

Can you press through everything this life and our enemy has taught you and believe that it is true?

How would life look and feel different if you dared believe?

Who do you love and lead that needs to know that they are His favorite?

Enrich

“All organizations exist to make people’s lives better… Every organization must contribute in some way to a better world for some group of people, because if it doesn’t, it will, and should, go out of business.” 

Patrick Lencioni

It is rare that I meet with a business leader where this idea from Lencioni doesn’t enter the conversation.  I describe it as the proverbial “perfect storm” for high integrity leaders.  Not only are you hard-wired to help others (when you help others the mesolimbic pathway allows for dopamine to reward you with good feelings), but it is an imperative of the gospel and simply good business.  Getting our teams to focus on changing other’s lives is a “win” by any measure.

When Ron Johnson, the designer for the Apple Store, started formulating the concept for the first of 300 stores around the world, he decided they needed a simple “purpose statement” to rally around.  He came up with “enrich lives”…

“Apple is about creating products that change others people’s lives, right? So for the Apple Store mission, we came up with one simple phrase: ‘Enrich lives.’ The entire store, and the experience of the store, would be designed to enrich not only the lives of the customers, but the employees as well.”

— Ron Johnson

Put on simple cards that employees were encouraged to carry around, that simple two-word statement, became the filter they made every decision through.  It defined nearly everything they did.  

Enrich lives.

Here are a few examples:

• Selling - Don’t sell to clients, enrich their lives.  The sales will follow from a very loyal customer base that will tell others about you.
• Time - Have enough staff so the customer will have as much time as they desire from an employee.  Show you value them and their time by offering yours.
• Smiles - Hire joyful, engaging staff, that are genuinely interested in others.  They will set and define the culture.
• Genius - Celebrate support.  People weren’t that excited about manning a help desk, but being a “genius” at the “genius bar” was very attractive.
• Engagement - Interaction by employees with clients is not measured by length of time, but by the quality of the engagement.  Your team will focus on what you measure.
• Benefits - Do not focus on features, but how the customer’s life will be enriched by the product (you see this in their television ads as well).
• Clutter - Clutter causes the brain to use unnecessary energy and makes making clear decisions difficult.  The stores are incredibly stripped down and simple.
• Multi-Sensory - they let the customers try on the products, touch and feel all of them, before they buy.  The stores are clean, bright, open, and simple.

I am especially convicted and challenged when people who don’t share my fundamental beliefs, seem to realize them better than I do.

What is the purpose of your business, organization, or family?

Is everyone on those “teams” aware of what it is?

Is it the filtering mechanism for everything you do?

What needs to change in order to realize some of the impact and success that Apple Stores experience?

Convergence

We were selling a house in an older affluent area of town a few years ago.  After looking at all the math found in the comparable sales, the number I thought the house should sell for and the number the realtor thought it would take “to move the house in this market” was about $50,000 apart.

I remember doing the math in my head.  Her commission at the “move well” rate was about $12,000.  Her commission at the “it might take a little longer” level was $13,500.  To get the commission possibly a little quicker and/or easier would cost her about $1,500.  It would cost me $48,500.  To her, the difference between the two wasn’t that material, to me it was incredibly material.  She felt the $50k number at a 3% level and I felt it the other 97%.

I tried to illustrate the difference and she didn’t seem to understand my perspective.  We were looking at the very same situation with very different eyes and through very different filters.

Have you ever had that experience?

If you are married, I know you have.  Before I learned to understand and appreciate the incredibly valuable and unique perspective my wife brings to nearly every situation, I simply saw her perspective as wrong.  I could not see past my own opinion, born of my experience, to value hers.  Understanding that she not only carries a different set of lenses, but that God ordained it that way to powerfully balance me and my determinations, has completely changed our marriage.  We agreed deeply on all the things that really mattered, but tended to focus on the small ways we didn’t.

It has not come easily and I still struggle with fully honoring this “gift,”but I’ve made a lot of progress.

All of this is serving as a set and backdrop for the play unfolding in front of me with a couple I am meeting for breakfast.  There is some level of frustration between the two of them as I tilt into some sensitive areas.  They are clearly not on the same page on a couple of issues.  The conversation is a little tense, but still very amicable.

The more I talk to them, the more I came to understand the reality of their relationship:

• They love one another.
• They are deeply committed to each other and their family.
• They seem to actually like and enjoy one another.
• They believe in the same things.
• They hope for the same things.

Just as God intended it.

Said another way, when you look at their hopes, dreams, desires, and beliefs, there was about a 97% overlap.  But as we talked, they seemed to be focusing mostly on the 3% where they weren’t on the same page.  They wanted and desired the same things, but there was just a little bit of noise on what they needed to do to get there.  

Why is that?  The deck is incredibly stacked against us.

• Our traditional idea of marriage is on the ropes.
• Our enemy hates everything marriage represents spiritually.
• Joy is considered the byproduct of self-actualization, not committed sacrifice.
• Marriage is a temporary, not permanent transaction, too easily discarded.

If we focus entirely on the 3% (if that is our reality), convergence seems impossible.  But if our primary reality is the 97%, with only 3% of noise separating perfect alignment, working toward resolution seems completely probable.  Like the well-worn ruts of a vehicle driven path, this couple is on a long journey in a similar direction, slightly apart, with the two paths seemingly blurring into one in the future.

How are you moving toward convergence with your spouse?

How are you moving toward convergence with your partners or team?

Is your reality more about the percentage that separates you or the likely larger percentage where you are aligned?

Is it time to claim and celebrate the 97% as the necessary step toward addressing the 3%?

Tendency

I chased a girl into the Speech and Theater program when I was in high school.  I was walking away from a drug culture, the train had already left the station for any sports involvement, and I was looking for a place to belong.  I was painfully shy and lacked any sense of identity.  Speech helped me gain confidence, taught me to better frame up my thoughts, gave me a place to belong, and got me closer to the aforementioned girl.

As you might imagine, as a thick-tongued boy lacking confidence, they kept chiding me to speak louder and enunciate.  It wasn’t until I felt like I was almost screaming and articulating every syllable as an individual word, that they felt like I was actually speaking in an appropriate manner.  Sometimes when you are not used to speaking up or having anyone care about what you have to say, you have to exaggerate in the other direction.  You have to do what feels like shouting, just to be heard.

I call that “fighting your tendency.”  It is a concept that seems to show up in conversations all the time.  It is the simple idea that you have go against the grain of your default behavior to get decidedly different results.

• If you tend to not speak up, you may have to talk in a way that feels excessive to you.
• If you tend to say too much like me, censor yourself to the point of almost feeling like you’re not saying anything.
• If you tend to micromanage, do what feels like completely taking your hands off the reins.
• If you tend to abdicate authority, do the opposite.
• If your spouse feels unloved, despite the fact that you think you’ve made it abundantly clear, make it unmistakably clear.

Fight the tendency to respond and behave the way you always have.  

For me, learning to ask questions instead of incessantly blabbering unwanted or unrequested answers, has changed the quality of almost every conversation.  I am trying to STOP dominating every conversation.  In fact, the 300 or so episodes of this very blog have allowed me a platform to share some of the deep thoughts and stirrings of my heart instead of trying to cram all of them into every conversation.

I am fighting my tendency by trying to be slower to speak and quicker to listen.

And it isn’t that our tendency isn’t often offered out of the best of intentions.  When my wife read a female companion version to the book “Wild at Heart” that had changed my life and been the focus of my ministry, I went to work:

• I signed her and a friend up for a retreat in Colorado based on the book without asking her (it was the middle of winter and she was in her third trimester with our fourth child).
• I ordered her 10 copies of the book.
• I help draft a list of the ladies she might invite to a study.
• I created the invitation that I thought she could send to all of them.

Yeah, it’s funny now, but I think I crushed her desire to actually pursue other women.  She didn’t actually start engaging women with this message in earnest for several years after that.  My heart was good, but my actions were bad.

All my best intentions, wrapped in my legalistic desire to control everything, ruined (temporarily) an opportunity for my wife to share her heart and inspiration about a life-changing message with others.  When it comes to many things, I have had to learn to sit back and keep my opinions and micro-managing to myself.  

Because my tendency is to take over, even when I think I am only encouraging, it can feel like micro-managing to others.  Going against my natural tendency, has brought some necessary balance to things.  Or at least I think so.  Maybe you should ask my wife.

What are your tendencies?

What are you offering too much of that you need to restrain?

Where are you offering too little that you need to step it up?

If you have the courage, ask your spouse or team members where they would like you to step it up and where they would like you to back off.  Ask them what tendencies you have that they would prefer that you fight!

Thinning

“Thinning the heard” is an expression used in ranching circles.  (Animal rights activist might want to skip the rest of this paragraph.) It typically refers to the practice of reducing the size of a herd of large farm animals by removing the genetically weaker ones.  It also can mean to hunt or kill off animals as a means of population control.

A quick Google search reveals that the expression is also used in a variety of contemporaneous, and sometimes offensive, ways.  It is referenced in reducing an iTunes playlist, narrowing the field of availability in a bar, and noting the fact that some of those people refusing to wear motorcycle helmets may not live to tell all their tales.

We’ve also have started using it in an organizational context.  Leaders of organizations are often daunted by the task of getting all the right people on the bus.  They can’t even begin to think about getting all of them in the right seats.  

• There are too many that don’t seem to be the right people.
• There are too many that don’t seem to be actively engaged.
• There is too much other work to do rather than focus on getting the right folks.
• It is too uncomfortable for them to remove the wrong folks.

Guess what?  You will never achieve the success you desire until you deal with this issue.  We coach the companies we work with to adopt two simple rules in dealing with substandard work or behavior.  We gained conviction about these practices when we learned that a church in Chicago utilizes them:

• Under-Performance - Get an understanding of how their performance needs to change.  Schedule a 90 day review.  Commit to whatever resources, training, etc. is required to get them there.
• Bad Attitude - Agree to what “right” looks like and set a 30-day review date.  Commit to do whatever you can do to help aid in the transition, but mutually agree that attitude is a choice.

If at the end of the 30 or 90 day periods, the behavior/performance hasn’t changed or isn't dramatically trending in the right direction, the employee is released to find a better fit for their skill set or a more suitable environment to allow for a better attitude.  Harsh?  Remember, we learned these practices from a church.  Their philosophy is that their stewardship responsibility is to maintain a high performing and positively engaged team.  We want everyone to work somewhere where their skills, efforts, and attitude can thrive.

We’ve observed something else in the teams we work with.  Once they get really clear on their desired culture (Values, Purpose and Vision), the herd starts to thin itself.  The inconsistency with the now clearly defined culture makes it difficult to remain on the team.  Also, the rest of the team buying into and operating under the powerfully embodied culture won’t allow others who don’t fit, to remain.

Without the owner having to be the bad guy, the herd gets thinned.

Not only does a clearly defined culture provide direction, elicit excitement, and cultivate engagement, it also helps ensure you have the right people on the bus.

Is it time to thin the herd?

Do you have the policies and practices in place to make that happen?

Is your culture and future clearly defined enough that the team will help thin the herd for you?

How much longer will you suffer the cost of low engagement by having the wrong team members?

Horizon

30,000 Foot View: A broad or general look at a problem, project, or subject as opposed to focusing on the details.

In the movie “Seabiscuit”, based on the extraordinary book by Laura Hillenbrand, they take us back to Depression-era America and the earliest days in the life of this amazing horse.  Seabiscuit was abused and wild, but naturally one of the fastest horses in the world when he was rescued by a similarly banged up owner, trainer, and jockey.  

Watching him launch out for the first time under stopwatch, moving aggressively in one direction and then the other, the owner noted how fast he was.  The trainer grinned and replied,

“Yeah, in every direction.”

That is what we find with most companies and leaders we encounter. People are working really hard… in every direction.  When we talk about taking a step back or ascending over the clouds of the day-to-day, climbing to the proverbial 30,000 foot view to get a larger or longer term perspective, we are often met with incredulous responses:

• Our industry is changing too rapidly.
• I have no idea what is going to happen in 3 years.
• I am too lost in the weeds to think beyond the day-to-day.
• Vision is a worthless exercise.

Let’s be honest, you and your team are already working really hard.

• But what are you working on?
• To what end are you working toward?
• Are you dictating your future or allowing the vagaries of the marketplace and industry to decide it for you?

The most powerful thing about a clear vision is how precisely it illuminates the things you must do today in order to achieve that powerful future.  It inspires and elicits excitement while breeding the elusive employee engagement we are all seeking.

We spent the day with a subset of an incredibly high integrity leadership team in Del Rio, TX.  

• We wanted to get out of the weeds.  
• We needed to get our heads above the clouds.  
• We needed to see even beyond our very clear 3 year vision that we are executing toward.  
• We needed to see generationally beyond the leadership of the founder/owners.

The team was privileged with an incredible line of sight.  From the hunting lodge where we were working, we could see for miles.  From the high walls of canyons nearby, cut by moving water over thousands of years, it felt like we could almost touch the U.S./Mexican border 30 miles away.  Our host said that the Sierra Madre range, another 50 miles further, could be seen on a very clear day.  It was the perfect site for this type of conversation.

The most humbling thing about this team is that they haven’t just operated with the kind of mature leadership that determines a 3 year destination and works toward that future.  They weren’t just focusing on the generational impact of change related to transitioning owner/founders.  Their line of sight extended clear into eternity.

Their success isn’t just marked in revenue, profitability, or even in number of locations or people employed, their ultimate benchmark is changed lives.  And they’re not just focused on changing the lives of the clients they care for, but also their client’s extended families and all the team members they employ that serve them.  We spoke of generative governance (life-giving leadership) and what needed to change to realize that more fully.  We spoke of nobility, stewardship, and a God-sized understanding of who they desire to become.

They are not a publicly traded company, but if they were, I’d already be placing my bets.  This is going to be an extraordinary story to watch unfold.  I am humbled to be holding a ringside seat.

Where are you going?

Have you identified a clear spot on the horizon you want to reach?

Are you starting to make the changes you need to get there?

Do your team members know the roles they are to play and how they fit into that future?

June Top 5 Reads

1 ) The Real Reason Your Meetings Are So Unproductive
You may not be able to get everyone to speak up in meetings, but you can still make them much more inclusive.

2) Want More Creative Employees? Create Some Conflict.
A little friction on your team can be a good thing, and these exercises can help you channel it productively.

3) How To Grow Your Business By Pruning
My intuitive way to grow my coaching training organization was to add programs and locations. As a result, our revenue increased, but our expenses outpaced it. After wearing ourselves out trying to grow by expanding, I discovered how to grow by pruning. 

4) 5 Ways To Improve Your Company's Horribly Inefficient Interview Process
Hint: Spell out in the job description exactly what success looks like after six months.

5) Surprisingly Simple Ways You Can Trick Your Brain Into Focusing
This research-based approach has shown improvements in brain function in as little as 12 hours.

Storms

About 650 miles and 12 hours into a return trip from Colorado, we looked down the road and saw this.  The weather map looked pretty ominous also.  We were on the Northwest tip of this multi-colored amoeba, heading south.

Growing up in coastal Texas, I’ve seen hurricane skies and seen the wreckage caused by the tornadoes that tend to spin out of them.  When the clouds form and begin to almost teem before your eyes, you head for cover.

Hurricane Celia almost took the roof off the house we were huddled in when I was a child.  My sisters and I were cloistered in a back bedroom of the house melting crayons with the candles our parents had given us to keep us occupied and out of the dark.  We watched with wide eyes through the fence boards over the windows at the carnage going on outside.  The days following taught us most of our neighbors hadn’t been so lucky.  Once most of their roofs got lifted off, the houses were defenseless against the onslaught.

All of that was getting dialed into my subconscious.

Before I could even think about whether to turn around, speed ahead, or find a place to hunker down, my Jeep was rocked by a blast from the East and my windshield was completely caked in dirt.  Reaching for the windshield wipers only turned the dirt to mud.  In a few seconds, however, the torrential rain and hail took care of the mud, but the wind was blowing so violently that it was separating my canvas top from the vehicle.

My wife and some of my kids were in a car just in front of me.  Despite their close distance, I could barely see their flashing taillights.  The noise of the storm just barely allowed our communication over the Bluetooth in our vehicles.  It felt like I was yelling at them:

Keep moving forward slowly.

Let’s look for an underpass to get under.

With wife and children directly in front of me and memories of childhood storms in my rearview, I was starting to get a little anxious.  But almost before I could fully think through all the implications and options, we seemed to break through the storm.

As in all the torrential experiences of our lives, even the vivid and visceral ones don’t seem so daunting in the retelling.  What we think we may not survive feels more like a grand adventure as we look back.  I am reminded of the words of Samwise Gamgee to Mr. Frodo when they were feeling particularly daunted in their quest for the ring.

“It's like in the great stories Mr. Frodo, the ones that really mattered. Full of darkness and danger they were, and sometimes you didn't want to know the end because how could the end be happy?

How could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad had happened? But in the end it's only a passing thing this shadow, even darkness must pass.

A new day will come, and when the sun shines it'll shine out the clearer. Those were the stories that stayed with you, that meant something even if you were too small to understand why. 

But I think Mr. Frodo, I do understand, I know now folk in those stories had lots of chances of turning back, only they didn't.

They kept going because they were holding on to something.That there's some good in the world, Mr. Frodo, and it's worth fighting for.”

If you don’t believe that there are blue skies ahead…

If you don’t think the sun will eventually shine out all the clearer…

If you don’t believe that there is good ahead…

If you don’t know that you have a Father who loves you…

Who intends great things for you and has a particular plan for you…

…continuing to move through the storm is nearly impossible.

• How bad are the storms raging in your life right now?
• Are you steadily moving through?
• Are you flanked by the confidence of experience, the strength of fellowship, and the resolve of a Father’s heart for you?

Play

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“To discern what is truly essential we need space to think, time to look and listen, permission to play, wisdom to sleep, and the discipline to apply highly selective criteria to the choices we make.” - Greg Mckeown

The book “Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less” in not a minimalist manifesto, in fact, it is about the pursuit of a more abundant life where you provide the maximum contribution.  It flies in the face of our western cultural sensibilities that says the only path to “more” is through doing “more.”  It also flies in the face, interestingly enough, in the way we often measure ministry success.

Ironically, it is all very consistent with the life of Jesus.  He repeatedly walked past the urging of the disciples to address the incredible ministry “opportunities” in front of him.  As God incarnate, how could He walk past obvious need?  The only thing He knew for certain, was that He was to be about His Father’s business.  He accomplished far more, by doing less of precisely the right things He was created to do.

Something deep within in myself wants to yell, “Amen!”.
But another part of me isn’t so comfortable with that.

McKeown advocates more space, sleep, and play.  He has loads of data to back up all the benefits of each, but let’s look at just one of those that seems the most antithetical to accomplishing much with our lives… "play."  He says this about play:

“Play is anything you do for the simple joy of doing it rather than as a means to an end.  It can lead to brain elasticity, adaptability, and creative breakthroughs.  Play engages our mind and fuels exploration because it broadens the range of options available to us and boosts the executive function of the brain and its planning, prioritizing, and deciding; play is also a powerful antidote to stress.”

We were in an all day meeting with a group of successful businessmen.  One of them is extraordinarily accomplished:

• Elder/leader of a large home church aggregation.
• Runs a successful business building a third location.
• Is on the board of a faith based school he help found.
• Has coached the school's basketball team to several state titles.
• Actively involved in the lives of his 11 children, various son/daughter-in-laws, and numerous grandchildren’s lives.
• Avid hunter.

I asked him what sort of role “play” has had in his life.  I assumed, given his age and his incredible level of accomplishment, that this might be one of those things that didn’t seem to fit into his schedule.  But he said,

“We play a lot.”

And then he said something that we’ll never forget (as he often does), “The greatest determinant in how much we play is trust.”  

• If we don’t have the faith required to trust that everything is going to be okay…
• If we don’t honestly believe that nothing escapes His hand…
• If we don’t know that He has overcome this world…
• If we don’t believe that He hasn’t given us more than we can handle…
• If we don’t know that we aren’t the master of our own fates…
• If we don’t believe that anything can happen outside of our efforts…

…permissioning yourself to play is unlikely.  The essential and necessary ingredient to partaking in this most essential of things in order to make your highest contribution… is faith.  My inability to play and simply do nothing with some of my time (which McKeown has proven has incredible essential value), is correlated to my lack of faith and trust.

Are you finding time to play in your busy schedule?

Why aren’t you, given the apparent value and essential nature of playing?

How is your lack of faith or the inability to trust the reason you can’t?

Simple

I went to a non-fiction writing conference a couple of years ago.  I was surrounded with legit writers much more accomplished than this unpublished storyteller.  They took us through a series of writing prompts with the objective of getting us to declutter and simplify our thoughts.  We were shown a simple photo of a weathered house in the middle of an endless field of grass and asked to describe what we saw.

The process was to have us increasingly simplify our descriptions, each time working with less words to accomplish the task.  I was undaunted by the shrinking word count and just started using bigger and more elaborate words (one of the byproducts of reading a lot to escape my troubled reality as a kid).  At one point the leader of the conference got so exasperated with me, that he blurted out:

“Just say the damn thing!!”

That phrase comes to mind often.  The pervasive sentiment of our culture leaves most of us wanting to be heard more than understood.  Our state of overwhelm has us moving from simplicity to complexity.  Doing or saying a whole lot more to actually accomplish or communicate less.  Ironically, it seems to be almost the opposite route that Jesus took.  If simplicity is the way of our Father, it is likely that our enemy has a hand in all this complexity.

There are all these passages in the Bible where it clearly seems that Jesus was trying to confuse the religious intelligentsia with his simplicity.  He actually said He spoke in parables (simple stories) so that they wouldn’t understand.  As a recovering legalist, I think I understand that.  Intellectualizing what is meant to be so simple is all about the wrong things.  For me it was based on insecurity, control, and the desire to make more of me and not more of Him.  That mindset trends toward exclusion instead of inclusion.

Whether it is with an individual or an organization, the clear path to not accomplishing anything is to focus on too many things.  In our experience (and I read a study once that backed this up) of working with teams:

• If you have one goal, you’ll get it done.
• If you have two to three, you’ll get 1-2 done.
• If you have more than three, you’ll likely accomplish none of them.

It is really simple, but it isn’t easy.  Almost everything in our culture, experience, and even our barometer for success tells us that…

Doing a whole lot of stuff leads to accomplishing much.

We’re swimming against that tide.  Our process of working with a team is to move toward simplicity.

1. Craft a clear picture of the future anchored in Purpose and Values.
2. Extract a simple set of goals with action steps to get you there.
3. Train a leadership team to work together to execute the plan.

Simple?  Yes.  

Easy?  Not so much.

To help companies do this sometimes feel like wrestling a bear, but the rewards for them are worth every grapple and hold.  A client recently told us…

“I never could have believed that we would be solving the issues we are. I can’t believe we have gotten so far so fast. We’ve accomplished more in 6 months than we have in the last 25 years.”

• Does your leadership trend toward simplicity or complexity?
• Are you working too hard to accomplish so little?
• Are you ready to start swimming against that tide?

Sourcing

One of the big trends in restaurants is local sourcing of ingredients.  In fact, “hyper-local” establishments only use things produced by farms, ranches, and dairy within a small radius of their eateries.  Our once agrarian society, largely outsourced abroad or industrialized, appears to be returning.

During the year before our eldest daughter got married, she became very interested in this movement.  She started reading about Dan Barber, one of the father’s of this revolution.  His Blue Hill Farm and best-selling book “The Third Plate” was featured in the Netflix series, “Chef’s Table”.  Our family got hooked on the series as a result of her interest.

One of the episodes this season features Alex Atala, the celebrated Brazilian chef whose restaurant is the 9th best restaurant in the world.  Alex not only introduced the world to Brazil through sourcing traditional ingredients from his native country, he introduced them to the men and women responsible for producing them.  His ultimate desire is not to celebrate the ingredients themselves, but bring nobility and humanity to the farmers and ranchers of Brazil.  Elevating the dignity of another person is holy work.

Last month I got to fulfill a lifelong dream and speak at a Young Life camp in Colorado.  The morning the camp was going to fill with hundreds of campers, I spoke to dozens of volunteers and staff about the privilege and responsibility of the task in front of them.  Mostly, we talked about how each of them uniquely bears the image of God and how offering that more powerfully is the most effective way to change other’s lives.

They asked me to introduce my family (5 of my 6 children, my wife, and son-in-law, were in the crowd).  Praying that morning, I felt like the Father was prompting me to tell the group who they were by how He knew them.  I told the group how each of them uniquely bore the image of God, what I learned about the Father from them, and how they all have changed my life.  I was caught off guard by how much emotion that stirred in me.

On Father’s day my daughter, who is spending the summer as a baker at that very camp where I spoke, sent me a long letter.  She said that numerous other staff members and volunteers have spoken to her about my talk.  What struck them most was how a father knew and loved his children uniquely.  

They were longing for the Father’s love they felt
through a father.

What it touched in them, deep beyond deep, is that they are each uniquely created in the image of God and that He knows them particularly… loves them in a way known only to Him and them.  Our mission with our children has always been that they would be sourcing, well beyond our parenting, the love of their true Father.  That they would know who they are and how loved they are because of Him.

Our job as parents and employers, is to introduce them to the culture of the Kingdom and their King.

• Are you introducing your family members and employees to the culture of the Kingdom and their King?
• Are you seeing each of them with the heart and eyes of their true Father?
• Are you sourcing beyond what they accomplish to who they really are and how they uniquely bear the image of God?

Drag

With a family of eight, we’ve had to learn to be efficient.  For instance, we rarely go to restaurants.  When we do venture out for special occasions, our “go to” spot is Chuy’s.  The waiter hands out menus and I immediately collect them back.  I order eight waters, two pounds of fajitas, and lots of napkins.

Traveling is similar.  We typically drive and if it is an extended one, like the 900 miles to Colorado, we strategically plot the day.  We pack meals, drinks, and snacks in both cars.  We only stop to refuel and restroom and make sure that everyone takes advantage of both opportunities at each stop.  Since we started Jeeping, we’ve added a necessity to each pit stop; cleaning bugs off the windshield.

I knew that part of the reason the mileage wasn’t great was due to the lack of aerodynamics of the Jeep, but I didn’t realize that the flat, almost vertical windshield was much of the culprit.  Not only do I have to de-bug the glass at every pit stop, I’ve already replaced the windshield once and need to do it again.  It is apparently a rock and debris magnet as well as a frequent landing pad for bugs.

At one of our monthly meetings last month with leaders of organizations, we were talking about employee engagement. 

“Employee engagement is the above and beyond effort people could give if they wanted to.”

It seems that most companies in America have a similar drag coefficient problem.  According to a recent survey:

• 30% of employees are actively engaged
• 52% are disengaged
• 18% are actively disengaged

If you put it into rowing parlance (as this great video resource does), out of every ten employees at the average company, 3 are rowing forward aggressively, 5 are along for the ride, and 2 are actually trying to sink the boat!

Before you summarily reject that idea, take a hard look at your team.  I bet some thoughtful consideration and the discernment of the Spirit will help that dragging 20% come to mind almost immediately.  

Part of the way our enemy dulls us (just read "Screwtape Letters" by C.S. Lewis if that comment doesn't make sense to you) is to convince us that things aren’t as bad as they really are.  Some of those folks that you think are just kind of going through the motions are actually paddling against the flow of where you are trying to take your organization.  I bet if you ask your leadership team, they could drop the team into those three categories pretty easily.

Those that are actively engaged (30%) need to be honored, celebrated, and rewarded.  Those along for the ride (52%) need a plan to help them get more actively engaged.  Those actively rowing against you (18%) need to find someone else’s boat to sink.  Things are difficult enough without hauling dead weight around!

Like removing the dead bugs from a windshield, you and your team will not be able to see and realize the future in front of you until those that are clouding the picture are removed.

• Watch the engagement video above.
• Pray and discern which team members are in each category.
• Invite your company leadership into the conversation and craft a plan to engage the disengaged, and remove the actively disengaged that are producing all that drag!

Process

“We must never put our dreams of success as God’s purpose for us.  The question of getting to a particular end is a mere incident.  What we call the process, God calls the end.  His purpose is that I depend on Him and on His power now.  It is the process, not the end, which is glorifying to God.”

Oswald Chambers

Who wouldn’t be anxious?  After twenty years of launching and then fathering a not-for-profit to significant maturity and impact, it was time to find a replacement.  It takes incredible maturity and humility to step aside from all that you’ve created… to believe that ultimate success and long term viability of the enterprise requires another at the helm.  Many founders or entrepreneurs never find the temerity of spirit to reach this point.  Of the few that do, most find it difficult to actually let go.

I asked this "Moses" what it felt like to think that someone else might take them into the promised land.  He rejected that idea.  Rather than remain in the wilderness, this leader plans to accompany them on the rest of the journey (just with someone else taking the lead).  He is graciously moving into a different role that will help ensure the success of his replacement.  He is stepping aside to let other leaders rise.  He is ready to walk this ancient, but rarely taken trail.

A few months ago, we gathered with their leadership team over coffee.  We were at a new Starbucks that hadn’t been adopted by too many “regulars” yet.  It was quiet and we sat in bar stools at a taller table that seemed to match the gravity of the situation.

Were we really ready to do this?

How would the current founder really handle this?

How do we make sure we hire the right person?

Does that person actually exist?

The air was pregnant with those questions, stories of disastrous hires, and concerns about everyone’s anxiousness to find the right person.  After all that fog had lifted a bit, a process began to emerge.  With slate wiped clean, we wove our hopes, ideas, experience, and best practices, into an articulated process we believed was God-breathed specifically for this task.

And then we all held our breath.

There were a lot of steps.  It would take time.  Would we run off good candidates through the articulated process?  

They ultimately worked from 22 candidates:

• They looked at relevant experience
• Scanned for requisite skills
• Checked references
• Cast vision to see if it was caught and embraced
• Looked for a coherent heart for their work
• Had them spend time around the mission
• Spent time around the team
• Had staff interviews
• Had board interviews
• Met their spouse

Each step of the way, the funnel narrowed and candidates withdrew or were eliminated.  The process did its job and the incontrovertible choice emerged.

But, success wasn’t ultimately claimed when the new hire was made.  Success was determined when we committed to the process.

“His purpose is that I depend on Him and on His power now.  It is the
process, not the end, which is glorifying to God.”

• Do you need to make a crucial hire?
• Have been burdened and discouraged by bad hiring decisions in the past?
• Do the work.  Seek wisdom, power, and guidance from beyond you.  Craft a process.  Trust that process.  Walk the ancient trail.